SALLY FIELD PASSES ON CUTE TO GAIN CHARACTER

Think back to Debbie Reynolds. Cute, cute, cute as a movie star - and then a career in Las Vegas.

Think further back to June Allyson. Cute, cute, cute as a movie star - and then guest appearances on The Love Boat and a new career as a "depend able" commercial spokeswoman.

Now consider Sally Field. Cute, cute, cute as Gidget and The Flying Nun - and then?

And then a career as a dramatic leading actress, with Oscars for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. And now, with her performance as Tom Hanks' indomitable mother in Forrest Gump and her upcoming television miniseries as a Texas matriarch in A Woman of Independent Means, she's developing into a character actress.

"We all get older every day. I'm old enough to be Julia Roberts' mom, which I played in Steel Magnolias. I'm not old enough to be Tom's mom - that sounds funny, doesn't it, 'Tom's mom'? But the movie starts when For rest Gump is a little boy," she says, looking not at all like the time-withered character actresses of old.

"Does this mean I'm a character ac tress? I don't know. It's a cliche, but I just look for good roles. When I did Soapdish (playing an aging, temperamental soap opera diva), that was a character part. I've never been a glamorous leading lady. Maybe I will be able to waltz gracefully into character roles without trouble."

Her scenes in Forrest Gump are brief, but memorable. Considering she's identified with the rural heroines of her Oscar-winning movies, playing Mama Gump could have been a selfparody. But she realistically presents a woman capable of giving her slowthinking, good-hearted son all the love and strength he will need to succeed.

"She's a woman who loves her son unconditionally," says Field, the mother of three. "We all love our children, but sometimes there are strings at tached. With Mama Gump, there's no strings. A lot of her dialogue sounds like slogans, and that's just what she intends. With children, you often make up a poem to help them learn the way home. She wanted to instill strong ethics in Forrest, so she gave him slogans to lean on, the way you give some children a poem."

Forrest's father is, in Mama Gump's words, "on vacation."In a scene that gets a huge response from the audience, she uses her sexuality to get her low-IQ son enrolled in school. Field staunchly defends the action.

"The scene takes place in rural Alabama in the late 1940s, when women had very little to call on. She thought of sex as her tool, as probably her only tool of power. She is a woman who feels that a task worth doing is a task well-done. And she would do anything for Forrest. No matter how much we think things have changed, one thing has stayed the same: When women have nothing else, they can rely on their sexuality."

As a young adult, Vietnam-era Forrest wins a Purple Heart and, by pure happenstance, becomes a millionaire. Mama Gump takes joyous maternal pride in both turns of events but does not change her style of living.

"She is very much a product of her era and her region. If Uncle Sam wants Forrest in Vietnam, she wants him to go, too. She belongs to that segment of America," says Field. "Yet, for all her love for her son, she's never dependent on him. She never expects Forrest to fill her life. After Forrest makes money, he buys her a nice dress and takes her to a fancy restaurant. But she keeps on running her boarding house, and she's very happy to do so."

Forrest Gump marks the actress's second high-profile turn in the last year, following her role as Robin Williams' upwardly mobile ex-wife in Mrs. Doubtfire.

"When we were making Mrs. Doubtfire, I fought very hard to make my character's point of view understand able. But I still think she's a bit of a villain. She breaks all sorts of parenting rules. And in one of her first scenes, she's planning to cancel her son's birthday party because he made some bad grades. After that, she's the baddie."